Islamophobia and Its Discontents

Q&A: Sam Harris

Free Will Review

Harris explores the notion that free will is an illusion in this nimble book (which, at 83 pages, can be read in one sitting or a couple of Metro rides), amiably and conversationally jumping from point to point. The book’s length is one of its charms: He never belabors any one topic or idea, sticking around exactly as long as he needs to in order to lay out his argument (and tackle the rebuttals that it will inevitably provoke) and not a page longer.

Learning to Respect Religion

Review of Free Will

Harris, armed with the newest research in experimental psychology and neuro-imaging, fires a brief and forceful broadside at the conundrum that has nagged at every major thinker from Plato to Slavoj Zizek.

Is Free Will an Illusion?

Free will has long been a fraught concept among philosophers and theologians. Now neuroscience is entering the fray. For centuries, the idea that we are the authors of our own actions, beliefs, and desires has remained central to our sense of self. We choose whom to love, what thoughts to think, which impulses to resist. Or do we? Neuroscience suggests something else.

Atheism in America

It’s good to be alive

The Smart List 2012: 50 people who will change the world

Welcome to the first Wired Smart List. We set out to discover the people who are going to make an impact on our future… So we approached some of the world’s brightest minds—from Melinda Gates to Ai Weiwei—to nominate one fresh, exciting thinker who is influencing them, someone whose ideas or experience they feel are transformative.

Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?

Four ways 9/11 changed America’s attitude toward religion

Articles of Faith: The Importance of Understanding Religion in a Post-9/11 World

By Amy Sullivan

Some thought leaders and policymakers embraced Samuel Huntington’s idea that the West was engaged in a “clash of civilizations” with Islam. Meanwhile, neo-atheists led by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens put forward their own theory of a world split between civilized secularists and dangerous religionists.

Inside the List: Reading September 11th

An article last month in The Christian Century explored the role of 9/11 in giving birth to so-called New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who got things going with “The End of Faith” (2004), which spent 33 weeks on the paperback list.

The New Atheism

By James Wood

In the last 10 years or so, the rise of American evangelicalism and the menace of Islamist fundamentalism, along with developments in physics and in theories of evolution and cosmogony, have encouraged a certain style of aggressive, often strident atheistic critique.

Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris

An Interview with Sam Harris

By Jonathan Derbyshire

Given the amount of interest and comment that my profile of Sam Harris has attracted, I thought it’d be useful to post the complete and unedited transcript of my conversation with him. The interview took place on 11 April, at the headquarters of Random House in London.